TIFF 2024: Will Toronto’s market ambitions give it a too-big-to-fail edge in stormy global film landscape?

In 2022, the Toronto International Film Festival witnessed the largest deal in its four-decade-plus history when Alexander Payne’s throwback dramedy The Holdovers was picked up for US$30-million by Focus Features.

Except The Holdovers wasn’t playing TIFF that year – not officially, at least.

Instead, a private screening was held at the downtown Scotiabank Cineplex in the midst of the typical festival madness, the event known only to buyers from the major Hollywood studios and streamers. But even though regular festival-goers had no idea that The Holdovers even existed at that point, the screening and the deal that quickly followed marked a turning point for TIFF’s future: Could it be both a massive public festival and a top-tier industry marketplace?

Like the European Film Market, which is held parallel to the Berlinale every February, or the Marché du Film, which runs alongside the Cannes festival in May, TIFF has set its sights on becoming the premier North American destination for buying and selling movies. Including, or rather especially, films that will never screen for public ticketholders. Or titles that have yet to shoot a single frame of footage, known as “packages,” which have some elements in place, such as a script and a star, but have not yet completed financing.

In 2026, TIFF will make things official as it launches a real-deal market – complete with all-new infrastructure, from staff to venues – thanks to a $23-million investment over three years from the federal government. That figure represents the single-largest government source of funding TIFF has received since its campaign to build its Lightbox headquarters, which opened in 2010.

“Right now in North America there is not a major market attached to a major festival – we plan to be that,” says TIFF’s chief executive Cameron Bailey, who hopes to more than double the number of industry delegates Toronto welcomes each September from about 5,000 to 12,000.

“We have the critical mass of artists, buyers, sellers and financiers already coming into town. We have direct flights from every place in the world that makes movies. We have the hotels and the restaurants,” Bailey adds. “This will also bring all the global commerce directly to the doorsteps of Canadian creators.”

In addition to the tourism and cultural benefits, the market could offer TIFF a kind of too-big-to-fail edge in a landscape that has become increasingly hostile to cultural organizations.

While TIFF has secured Rogers Communications as the “presenting sponsor” of its 49th annual festival and has seen total partnerships increase by 25 per cent over the strike-plagued 2023 edition, it isn’t clear if the new relationships are financially commensurate with the roughly $5-million a year that former lead sponsor Bell contributed to the not-for-profit arts organization. And TIFF’s year-round Lightbox multiplex faces myriad challenges when it comes to the tumultuous theatrical landscape.

Yet there is a sense both inside and outside TIFF that if organizers get this market right, the festival could not only create a critical new revenue stream but also establish a massive foothold in the global screen sector.

“The public side drives the success of TIFF, but the major component that not everybody sees is the festival’s relevance to the industry. If TIFF can make itself more friendly to that, then it anchors them as essential,” says Noah Segal, co-president of Elevation Pictures, Canada’s largest independent distributor. “They’ve really gotten the message that they have to think bigger than their own sandbox.”

While the market will not formally launch for two years – in a slight missed opportunity of timing, one year after TIFF celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025 – a close look at this year’s festival reveals Toronto’s market ambitions already peeking out from behind the curtain.

This year’s opening-night film is the Ben Stiller-led dramedy Nutcrackers, the first “sales” title (meaning a movie arriving at the festival without a distributor already attached) to open TIFF since 2009. There are in fact 144 sales titles in this year’s lineup, a “high number that is very intentional,” according to Anita Lee, TIFF’s chief programming officer. And for the first time, TIFF’s official schedule lists private “market screenings” taking place inside the Lightbox cinemas 5, 6 and 7.

“We have more than 100 private screenings, working closely with all the major U.S. and international sales companies,” says Bailey. “Those same distributors and streamers who are launching their films publicly at the festival, you want them to be there when sales titles are being offered privately, too.”

Already, there is vocal enthusiasm from the industry’s largest players.

“Having a market at Toronto is essential for the festival, the independent film community and anyone who has an interest in setting up movies – producers, actors, directors,” says Roeg Sutherland, co-head of media finance at the Hollywood agency powerhouse CAA, who brokered the Holdovers deal in 2022. “There is no reason that there should be a lull between the Cannes and Berlin markets – Toronto fits perfectly in the middle, and the market will be a critical component in supporting the independent film ecosystem.”

An open question, though, is how TIFF will make its market an attractive enough proposition for that ecosystem’s top players – many already coming to Toronto to make deals on the festival sidelines – to pay for registration, advertising and screenings. And in an era of sector-wide belt-tightening, will sought-after producers and international cultural agencies have the budgets to pay for travel and physical market booths?

“We’re very aware that it’s a challenging time, but we’re building very proactive collaborations with key stakeholders,” says Lee. “TIFF can be a real platform to bring the international industry to Canada.”

Timing may also pose a challenge. TIFF’s only competition in the North American market space is the flailing American Film Market, which is moving to Las Vegas from Santa Monica, Calif., this November in an effort to refresh its offering. Yet Toronto’s early September run arrives just as the global film community awakens from the dog days of summer, with attractive new packages from sellers sometimes coming in at the last minute.

All of which means that TIFF needs to start building its market – selling its incentives and growing its capabilities – immediately.

Bailey and his team have been busier than ever, balancing the prefestival season while liaising with Telefilm, and through them the Heritage Ministry, to prepare detailed submissions to the Treasury Board in order to open the valve of federal investment. After that, global partners must be sold and local spaces secured.

“Venues and facilities are key to winning the affinity of the marketplace. Right now, as wonderful and dynamic as TIFF is, there is no real focal point for the buyer and seller community,” says Stuart Ford, chief executive of the sales and financing giant AGC Studios.

Ford’s company is representing sales for Ron Howard’s new star-studded film Eden and Joseph Kahn’s buzzy sci-fi thriller Ick, both of which will enjoy their world premieres this week at TIFF. But in a precursor to official market activity, AGC is also holding private buyer screenings in Toronto of Matt Tyrnauer’s new documentary on the Nobu restaurant empire, which is not playing the festival itself.

“One of the biggest hindrances to both the Berlin and Cannes marketplaces is the literal amount of physical distance that the industry has to cover on a day-to-day basis between the market and the festival,” Ford adds. “Toronto is a major metropolitan hub that can solve that equation. I’m a big advocate.”

There is also a full-circle element of success baked into the concept of a festival-adjacent market.

While few attending TIFF in 2022 knew that The Holdovers was screening for buyers, Focus brought the movie back to Toronto the following year, officially. The film won the runner-up People’s Choice Award, and then went on to score five Oscar nominations, including best picture. If Toronto can claim another deal-to-Dolby Theatre victory this year, the market should sell itself.